Talk:Citicorp Center engineering crisis

Ready?

Any reason not to take this draft to article space?--agr (talk) 18:09, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Epicgenius — Any objection?--agr (talk) 15:02, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

No objection from me, ArnoldReinhold. Epicgenius (talk) 15:10, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

The estimate of potentially casualties seems to high

The article estimates that up to 200k people could have died from the building collapsing. It names a source that also quotes the 200k. However considering that at 9/11 ~3k people died the estimate seems to be exaggerated and not realistic. I mean how many people can fit in that building and even if it collapses on a surrounding building it is not like all the buildings in Manhattan would start falling like dominos. This seems like a misquote of somebody giving a much lower estimate like 2k. 37.24.142.194 (talk) 19:28, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, the number is facially preposterous. The cited reference cites another reference, which cites yet another reference, which is a BBC 30-minute video no longer available. Given the lack of documentation, I've revised it to "thousands". 2603:7000:8100:3600:1450:DE2A:6CCE:20CD (talk) 15:45, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Confusion

The article seems to say Hartley (a student at Princeton) discovered the problem, but the problem was ignored or dismissed until the student DeCarolis asked LeMessurier some questions, and then LeMessurier "ended up in agreement with Hartley". But the article does not mention whether DeCarolis was aware of Hartley's work or not (or how), or whether DeCarolis was a student at Princeton or somewhere else, or whether DeCarolis was really even aware there was a problem when he asked the questions, or whether (or when) LeMessurier became aware of Hartley's analysis. There is some mention of the potential for someone to accuse DeCarolis of "seeking or stealing glory", but it is not clear why asking some questions would be the basis of glory or how he could have been stealing that glory from anyone. It does not seem clear (from what the article says) whether Hartley's work actually contributed (directly or indirectly) toward the action that was eventually taken by LeMessurier to fix the problem. Did DeCarolis or LeMessurier ever read her thesis? Did Billington play any role in communicating Hartley's findings to DeCarolis or LeMessurier? The article also contains a comment that appears to say that NIST did a reassessment and concluded there wasn't really a problem to begin with, but doesn't really say anything more about that. If the whole thing was a false alarm and there was no real problem in the first place, that information should be highlighted and explained more thoroughly in the article. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 04:17, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

In agreement here with BarrelProof-- I'm also concerned because much of the cited articles are from Lee DeCarolis himself, and aren't from outside sources confirming the call. The blog article cited he authored. 2601:449:4200:5310:BDAD:6C59:A2E2:F932 (talk) 16:07, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

The Online Ethics article by DeCarolis confirms that DeCarolis and LeMessurier were not aware of the thesis by Hartley, and that it was really "Professor Zoldos" of New Jersey Institute of Technology (who was also apparently not aware of the thesis by Hartley) who had raised the concern about the structure that was relayed to LeMessurier. DeCarolis had no independent thoughts on the subject. He said he was just a "freshman architecture student" and was just relaying what his professor had said, explaining that "I must have seemed hopelessly ignorant to LeMessurier, telling him that my professor thought the building columns were in the wrong places". Of course, the source of this information is DeCarolis, but no clear (direct or indirect) connection between Hartley and LeMessurier is evident anywhere. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 21:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Also, LeMessurier directly described the phone calls with the student, and said the student was male. If the student was female, he presumably would have remembered that. He describes the phone calls with the student in his 1995 lecture at MIT, for which a video recording is available on YouTube. He refers to the New Yorker article in the lecture, so the lecture was after the article. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 20:54, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Subject of when the retrofit of the steel information was released to the public

I believe the 1995 year assertion here is false. I and other of my colleagues from MIT school of architecture took a course from Mr Le Messurier around 1988, 1989 , and in the course, Le Messurier described to us much of the entire story. He certainly included in that the fact that structural modifications were made. I suppose they counts as “public “ because it was basically syllabus material in a university course ( his course he taught at Harvard ). MIT and Harvard had a course sharing program that allowed the Harvard and MIT students to take courses at each others schools.

There were other interesting facts shared in the class : for instance he shared why the NyC press didn’t pick up on the story and how that was lucky for them. Also , he described his “hat in hand” approach to the NYC building review officials , how instead of bringing action against him , they hired him to fix the problem. How they rented 2 floors of a nearby hotel , and installed multiple phone lines , to run a command center to solve the problem . How Le Messurier flew regularly into the City, sometimes at night , during the retrofit and could see the little white lights through the windows of the building ( welders doing their strategic welding) on various floors of the building from his airline window seat. How they planned the work sequence not to get the entire project finished as quickly as possible but instead in a way that made the building stronger and stiffer with each incremental bit of welding ( adding stiffening elements: the little white lights ). Tomhurtarchitecture (talk) 03:20, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

I suppose the reason it's stated as 1995 is that this course you're describing was not recorded. Do you know of any recording of this course, or perhaps this information you're describing is writen on the syllabus? UsUsStudios (talk) 22:45, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Title change from Citicorp Center to Citigroup Center

The building’s official name is Citigroup Center, which is also the title used in the main Wikipedia article about it (Citigroup Center). To keep things consistent across Wikipedia, I think we should request a page move to reflect the correct name.

Additionally, we could update all mentions of "Citicorp Center" in the page content to "Citigroup Center" so the article is fully aligned. I’d make those edits now, but it seems odd to change the references before the title is officially updated—so it makes sense to move the page first. UsUsStudios (talk) 22:12, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

The building's name was Citicorp Center at the time, so I believe it should be kept the same. Most sources also reference the building as such. Chorchapu (talk | edits) 22:24, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

Yep, this is actually the reason why I created this page at the title "Citicorp Center engineering crisis" even though the building's name has since changed. While technically not wrong, it would be anachronistic to refer to this as the "Citigroup Center engineering crisis". – Epicgenius (talk) 13:40, 23 May 2025 (UTC)